What Does the Research Say About How Caregivers Talk to Their Autistic Children?

Before children are school age, their primary interaction partner is often a caregiver. How caregivers talk to their children – including how much they talk, the kinds of things they ‘do’ with their talk (e.g., functions such as making a request, giving directions), and whether or not their talk is focused on the child’s interest- may be important for how children develop. This is especially important to understand for families with autistic children, who might need extra support in achieving developmental milestones such as communication and language. Because this issue is so important, there have been many studies over the years that have studied caregiver talk, but none have summarized the different ways caregiver talk has been measured.

To help sort through the research on this topic, we summarized all of the available studies on how caregivers talk to their autistic children, including how caregiver talk was defined and measured, the theoretical approaches that guided research, and the research findings. All together, we reviewed 65 studies that used group designs, were peer reviewed, published after 1980, and quantitatively measured caregiver talk with autistic children.

Most research on this topic has examined the functions of caregiver talk, followed by the meanings associated with the talk, and the extent to which the talk was responsive to what children were doing. Several of the studies showed that talk related to what children are looking at or doing is associated with autistic children’s language development. There is also some evidence that influence goes both ways – children who talk in more complex ways have caregivers who talk in more complex ways, and vice versa.

We think it is important to know that some research findings in regards to caregiver talk and its effects on autistic children are robust, and have been repeated in several studies. However, there are some things that could be improved, such as research with larger sample sizes, research to understand the kinds of social actions and activities that caregiver talk can support, and research on how structural features of caregiver talk influence autistic children’s interactions and development. 

Bottema-Beutel, K., Kim, S.Y.*, Crowley, S.*, & Yoder, P.J. (2021). Developmental associations between joint engagement and autistic children’s vocabulary: A cross-lagged panel analysis. Autism, 25(2), 566-575.

Bottema-Beutel, K., Kim, S.Y., Crowley, S., Augustine, A., Keceli-K.aysili, B., Feldman, J., & Woynaroski, T. (2019). The stability of joint engagement states in infant siblings of children with ASD: Implications for measurement practices. Autism Research, 12(3), 495-504.

Bottema-Beutel, K., Woynaroski, T., Louick, R.*, Keefe, E.S.*, Watson, L.R., & Yoder, P.J. (2019). Longitudinal associations across vocabulary modalities in children with autism and typical development. Autism, 23(2), 424-435.

Bottema-Beutel, K., Lloyd, B., Watson, L., & Yoder, P.J. (2018). Bidirectional influences of caregiver utterances and supported joint engagement in children with and without autism spectrum disorder. Autism Research, 11, 755 – 765.

Bottema-Beutel, K., Malloy, C., Lloyd, B., Louick, R., Nelson, L.J., Watson, L. R., & Yoder, P.J. (2018). Sequential associations between caregiver talk and child play in autism spectrum disorder and typical development. Child Development, 89(3), e157-e166. 

Bottema-Beutel, K., Yoder, P., Hochman, J.M., & Watson, L. (2014). The role of supported joint engagement and parent utterances in language and social communication development in children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 44, 2162-2174.